The State of the Netbook, Part I: WEee have lived before

The netbook has taken off over the last year, but fifteen years of drama …

Since their introduction at the beginning of 2008, so-called netbooks have had a sudden, meteoric rise; sales have surpassed all projections, and new launches have dominated much of the gadget press. My own anecdotal evidence matches perfectly with the sales data: I've been seeing them all over the place this year. Today I saw an Italian guy using an MSI Wind on the quad and a businesswoman using an Eee on the train, in addition to the bearded Eee-user in the back of my math class and the Mini-Note-toting hipster in my Chemistry class.

How did this happen all of the sudden, and why? Can the netbook growth phenomenon possibly continue unabated? In this feature series, Ars explores the past, present, and future of the netbook form factor. This first article explores the surprisingly long history of netbook-style computers, from their origins in the early days of x86 to the long hiatus before the rennaissance which created the modern netbook.

Power, density, and x86 inevitability

The prime mover behind the netbook revolution is the continuing exponential increase in transistor density—and hence computing power and storage capacity—made famous by the semiconductor industry's preternatural tracking of Gordon Moore's prediction of future densities from all the way back in 1965. Last year, Moore's Law at work in both the processor and flash memory markets tipped the balance, leading to the dramatic saga which has unfolded over the last fourteen months. Namely, at the 45nm node, the x86 ISA has finally gone ultramobile.

Something of the kind was predicted near the time of its inception by Ars' own Jon Stokes, who posited a "law of x86 inevitability" and trumpeted his conviction that ultramobile x86 devices would become popular very shortly.

But though the rise of the netbook may have taken the market by storm this year, the "netbook" form factor has been with us in some form or fashion since the very early years of x86. Let's take a brief tour of netbook history by looking at a few historical examples.

The HP 200LX

As far back as 1994, the HP 200LX and its less-capable 95LX and 100LX predecessors packed 8Mhz 80186-class hardware capable of natively running DOS programs into a one-pound "palmtop" form factor. Running a 640x200 non-backlit grayscale screen and several megs of RAM, the device could run DOS and even Windows 3.0. With serial, PCMCIA, CF and IR ports, expandability allowed additional storage, modems, and even mice to be connected to the tiny device. To top it all off, this dynamo could run for weeks of typical use on a single pair of AA batteries with easy recharging. (Image (c) Andrew R. Lawn, reproduced with permission from http://www.squit.co.uk/computers/)

Even now, more than ten years after HP phased out the 200LX in favor of WinCE-based devices, activefancommunitiesputter with Linux, Web browsers, cameras, video, sound recording, backlit screens, overclocking, custom cases, and other novel features on the tiny devices. Given these amazing features, which make the device so wonderful my mother uses one to this day, why didn't the 200LX or a close competitor with the same design ethos take over the entire world and several major asteroids?

The answer can be found in power; the guts of an ancient desktop weren't enough for the applications that ultraportable PCs would need. The LX series was great for businesspeople and technologists, but the multimedia revolution completely bypassed it. The 200LX ran spreadsheets like a champ (it's where I learned Lotus 123) and supported all the contacts and calendars users could ever need, along with hokey DOS games like the infamous "Lair Of Squid," but that's about it. And access to the still-primitive internet was limited to text-based DOS applications running on wired dial-up modems. The 200LX was good, but it just wasn't good enough.